outskirts
Britishplural noun
Explanation
Some people like to live downtown. Others prefer the open spaces of the suburbs. But if you live in between the two, you are in the outskirts, the place where the city ends and the suburbs begin. Outskirts describes the outer edge of a city or town, farthest from the center but still technically part of that place. If you had a city map, you could draw a line on all sides where crowded streets filled with apartment buildings and businesses begin to give way to single-family houses and country roads. You might not get a perfect circle but you will see that outskirts are those border places between the city and the little towns that surround it.
Vocabulary lists containing outskirts
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Observations across multiple wavelengths confirmed that the object was located on the outskirts of a distant galaxy.
From Science Daily • Jun. 26, 2026
We were not at a text-for-location warehouse rave on the outskirts of downtown L.A., nor were we at a club.
From Slate • Jun. 25, 2026
It will be hosted in University of Edinburgh buildings on the outskirts of Penicuik and Roslin in Midlothian, near the institute where Dolly the sheep was cloned.
From BBC • Jun. 24, 2026
She had moved from the outskirts of Kyiv, hoping to be better protected in the city centre, next to the holy site.
From Barron's • Jun. 15, 2026
An hour out of the basement, Fang and I trudged along the dark corridor of road cutting through the wetlands park on the outskirts of town.
From "Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet" by Joanne Proulx
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
